Archive for December, 2014

Harris House 360 is locally owned and operated in Texarkana, Arkansas. Our service area includes Texarkana, AR and surrounding areas including Ashdown, Fouke, Genoa, Hope, Lewisville, Atlanta, Queen City, Hooks, and New Boston. We’ve partnered with RTV virtual tour software company to provide the highest quality interactive virtual tours using the latest technology to promote your property or business. We are here to serve real estate brokers, agents, home owners and business owners.

Real estate virtual tours have come a long way—from a cool and innovative feature for a select few listings, to a routine and almost expected part of any property marketing. Whether you’re a real estate agent looking to draw more attention to your listings, or a virtual tour provider looking for ways to provide your clients with better value, you need to add a little extra to your virtual tours to help them stand out.

These tips will help you create virtual tours for real estate and business properties that will engage your viewers and put the “wow” factor back in these powerful marketing tools.

Use more picturesIt seems like a simple solution, but adding more pictures with higher quality to your virtual tours can really help them stand out. If you don’t already, use a digital camera to take pictures of your properties instead of a cell phone, and set the resolution high. Take a lot more pictures than you’ll use, and choose the best shots to include in the virtual tour.

In addition, include a greater number of photos in your virtual tour. Don’t forget to use images of the property around the house or building, as well as the surrounding community and cityscapes where appropriate.

Create a video virtual tourVideo virtual tours have been growing in popularity over the past few years. Filming a video tour of the property lets you convey the flow of a home as well as the look and feel, and helps to highlight the visual appeal of the best selling points.

Walk-through video tours can be accompanied with narration to offer more detail for prospective buyers. You may even consider using a rolling tripod to film smooth, seamless video of your properties.

Include an interactive floor planA floor plan is a great way to show prospective buyers exactly what they can expect from a property. Interactive floor plans, such as those you can create with RTV software, allow viewers to click on a room or area, and jump directly to the relevant photos or video in the virtual tour.

You can also include a “floor plan” of the community by placing mash-up maps in your virtual tours, which show landmarks and detailed information about the area surrounding the property. Most MLS (Multiple Listing Service) suites will generate map mash-ups that can be included in virtual tours. You can also create custom maps that show information such as schools, shopping centers, restaurants, and recreation facilities using Google Maps or the “Find a Neighborhood” feature on REALTOR.com.

RTV virtual tour software company officially announced on Thursday December 9th 2014 that they have become a Google Trusted photographer company. This press release was picked up and reported by CNBC. They are excited to provide Google Street View | Trusted photography to our national accounts as well as providing a venue for our nation wide network of photographers to begin selling Google Street View | Trusted shoots to small and medium businesses across the country

As a Google Trusted Agency, RTV is also allowed to perform hotel virtual tours for the Business View program. Google currently only allows a select few agencies and photographers to perform these virtual tours with in their system.

Photography for Choice Hotel properties has begun in Texas, Virginia, and North Carolina. We anticipate our photographers will begin photographing other southern states in the next 30 to 60 days, and our northern tier properties in the spring.

Business View Tours are popular for small and medium businesses such as restaurants and retail stores, due to the immediate impact on search engine visibility. A potential client or customer can “walk through” a business they are considering visiting , creating a sense of familiarity and comfort before they ever stop foot on the property.

Read our Press Release Below

Traverse City Virtual Tour Software & Photography Service Company

Receives Google Trusted Photography Agency Certification

TRAVERSE CITY, MI, December 9, 2014 – RTV, Inc (RTV) a Traverse City based virtual tour software and photo service firm announced today they are officially a Google Trusted Photography Agency. Google Trusted Photography Agencies must go through rigorous testing and training to ultimately manage a group of professional photographers that are used to photograph, create, and publish Google Street View | Trusted virtual tour productions.

A Google Street View | Trusted virtual tour allows Internet users to “Step Inside” a local business from any computer, laptop, or portable device. When present, a Business View virtual tour will be prominently displayed within the Google search results next to the business contact information, directions and reviews. Upon clicking “See Inside” users are able to take an instant virtual tour of that particular business giving them an experience similar to that of the Google Street View technology.

RTV will be leveraging their well-established network of over 1000 professional photographers around the world to offer both the RTV virtual tour product as well as the Google Street View | Trusted product to thousands of local businesses throughout the USA, Canada, and other countries.

With the project just sixty days underway, RTV already has nearly two hundred photographers on their way to being certified as agency photographers with more new recruits showing interest in the program every week. The catalyst driving this intensive push to quickly become a Google Trusted Agency came in October of 2014 when a national hotel chain awarded RTV with 1500 + hotel shoots, each requiring 30 professional photographs and a Google Street View | Trusted virtual tour of the hotel. RTV is estimating this initiative to be completed by July or August of 2015.

“We just knocked out five hundred hotels in ten weeks for another major brand earlier this year,” said Jason LaVanture, VP and Founder of RTV. “Fifteen hundred hotels with Google shoots by August should be doable assuming we keep up our current pace. It’s one thing to get a few people to do something all at once, but another altogether trying to get a thousand photographers to purchase the special equipment, take Google photography classes, pass the Google quizzes, and attend our weekly webinars that we’re currently holding on the subject.

“Right now it’s nothing short of a miracle that we have so many loyal photographers running down this path with us. It’s great!”

RTV is proud to announce our latest T4 approved virtual tour provider, Caroline Tudor! Caroline will be offering both Google Business view and RTV virtual tours in the San Francisco area.

A native to San Francisco, Caroline attended J. Eugene McAteer High where she took her first professional photography class. She discovered her love for creating images through the lens of her Pentax K1000. She went on to formally study professional photography in college.

After a career in medical photography and other endeavors, she is now building her commercial photography and virtual tour business in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Specializing in commercial photography, some of her clients include commercial real estate agencies, builders, retailers, marketing firms, and other independent businesses. She provides the highest quality interactive virtual tour and photographic services, all with the purpose of making the best possible impression of your business.

The internet has become your most important marketing tool and professional hotel photography is the key component to booking rooms. “A picture is worth a thousand words” so if you’re serious about looking your best, using the most up to date modern technology, getting the lowest price, and fastest turn-around time, then franchisees will tell you that RTV Inc. is the RIGHT vendor for you.

Whether you own one or one-hundred hotels, RTV can be there fast (typically within two-weeks from the time that an order has been placed anywhere in the U.S.) and offer you the best looking photographs and technology. All your high definition professional photography is yours to keep for print and will be distributed to the E-Brochure page as well as thousands of travel planning portal sites!

All services are 100% guaranteed. Service availability is 100% guaranteed anywhere in the United States. We’ve been offering professional Hotel Photography since 1999 and have access to over 1000 professional photographers worldwide allowing us to give you FASTER delivery times at a LOW COST with the BEST quality.